NEW YORK (AP) — Achieving the title of youngest driver to win a Formula One World Championship is really hard. Or having the most ascents of Mount Everest. But what about most soda cans crushed with your feet in a minute?
Guinness World Records is celebrating its 70th anniversary by giving regular folks a way to get into a list of their famous accomplishments — offering some unclaimed potential titles and creating an online quiz to help readers match personality types to possible records.
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Married couple Julio Mora Tapia, 110, and Waldramina Quinteros, 104, both retired teachers, pose for a photo at their home in Quito, Ecuador, Friday, Aug. 28, 2020. The couple is recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest married couple in the world, because of their combined ages. They have been married for 79 years. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)
Married couple Julio Mora Tapia, 110, and Waldramina Quinteros, 104, both retired teachers, pose for a photo at their home in Quito, Ecuador, Friday, Aug. 28, 2020. The couple is recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest married couple in the world, because of their combined ages. They have been married for 79 years. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)
Seiichi Sano, an 89-year-old Japanese man, rides a wave at Katase Nishihama Beach, Thursday, March 30, 2023, in Fujisawa, south of Tokyo. Sano, who turns 90 later this year, has been recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest male to surf. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Assamese dancers in traditional attire perform as they attempt Guinness World Record in the largest folk dance performance category in Guwahati, India, Friday, April 14, 2023. Around 11,000 Bihu dancers and musicians performed together to set a new record for Guinness World Record in the largest folk dance performance category today. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)
Andy Glass, left, and Illusionist Antonio Diaz "El Mago Pop" presented with the Guinness World Record for highest weekly gross for a solo show on Broadway at The Barrymore Theatre on Friday, June 14, 2024, in New York. (Photo by CJ Rivera/Invision/AP)
Do you stay calm and pace yourself? Or are you all about getting it done quickly? Answers to five questions like that online lead to world record options to attempt — like most eggs stacked in one minute or farthest distance bottle flip.
There's also a list of 70 unclaimed titles, like fastest time to make a burrito, longest marathon playing air guitar and most anchovies eaten in a minute. They're sorted by headings: speed, power, precision, passion, patience, one for under-16s and another with a friend or pet, like most items caught by a cat in a minute.
“I am completely of the opinion that we’re all amazing in our own way, it’s just discovering what that thing is and celebrating it,” says Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday. “I want to see kids in the same book as Usain Bolt.”
First published in 1955, the annual book — initially conceived to settle pub arguments — has developed into an international phenomenon, selling 155 million copies in more than 40 languages. The publication itself is listed as the world’s bestselling copyrighted book.
It started when Sir Hugh Beaver, then managing director of the Guinness Brewery, was invited to go game bird hunting in Ireland. He and his companions soon began to squabble over which was Europe’s fastest game bird. There was no quick way to solve the dispute.
Beaver dreamed up a pamphlet that could be sold to pubs alongside barrels of Guinness stout. He asked twins Norris and Ross McWhirter, who were fact-finding researchers, to compile something that would be different from the day’s encyclopedias, which were dry and very highly academic.
Glenday has been in charge of the books since the 50th anniversary and has been democratizing the record-keeping, opening up entries for things like the most sweaters worn and the loudest burp. He believes striving for goals is an innately human thing.
“The more open and free it is to everyone to have a go, I think the more we all collectively benefit,” he says. “It’s not like there’s a piece of cake that’s going to be eaten and it’s all gone. We can just keep adding and adding.”
Unlike the Olympics, which decides what is and what is not a proper sport, Guinness World Records embraces all kinds of achievement, as long as they're meaningful, interesting and a degree of effort has been made. “Otherwise, it’s official, but it’s not amazing. And we have to be officially amazing,” he says.
Guinness World Records is where you'll find Ashrita Furman of New York City, who jumped the 1,899 steps of the CN Tower in Ontario, Canada, on a pogo stick in a record time of 57 minutes and 51 seconds.
“He is a real athlete,” says Glenday. “Who else is celebrating these people and accrediting them and validating their amazing thing? No one, apart from us. So I can see why after 70 years we’re still relevant.”
To those critics who say Glenday is making a mistake by elevating, for instance, the men’s high jump world record holder in the same pages as the fastest person to ever push an orange for one mile using their nose, he disagrees. Both require concentration, training and dedication.
“To me, it is the same discipline, the same mindset. It's just society’s been sort of programmed to think one is more impressive than the other.”
Married couple Julio Mora Tapia, 110, and Waldramina Quinteros, 104, both retired teachers, pose for a photo at their home in Quito, Ecuador, Friday, Aug. 28, 2020. The couple is recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest married couple in the world, because of their combined ages. They have been married for 79 years. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)
Seiichi Sano, an 89-year-old Japanese man, rides a wave at Katase Nishihama Beach, Thursday, March 30, 2023, in Fujisawa, south of Tokyo. Sano, who turns 90 later this year, has been recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest male to surf. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Assamese dancers in traditional attire perform as they attempt Guinness World Record in the largest folk dance performance category in Guwahati, India, Friday, April 14, 2023. Around 11,000 Bihu dancers and musicians performed together to set a new record for Guinness World Record in the largest folk dance performance category today. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)
Andy Glass, left, and Illusionist Antonio Diaz "El Mago Pop" presented with the Guinness World Record for highest weekly gross for a solo show on Broadway at The Barrymore Theatre on Friday, June 14, 2024, in New York. (Photo by CJ Rivera/Invision/AP)
BUNIA, Congo (AP) — Authorities in northeastern Congo banned funeral wakes and gatherings of more 50 people Friday in an effort to curb a rapidly spreading Ebola outbreak in a region where medical workers have struggled with a lack of resources and pushback from angry residents.
The World Health Organization said that the outbreak now poses a “very high" risk for Congo — up from a previous categorization of “high” — but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 82 cases and seven deaths have been confirmed in Congo, but that the outbreak is believed to be “much larger."
There is no available vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, which spread undetected for weeks in Congo's Ituri Province following the first known death while authorities tested for another, more common, Ebola virus and came up negative. There are now 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths, though more are expected as surveillance expands.
“We are trying to catch up,” Congo Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner told the AP. “It is a race against the clock."
Supplies were being rushed to Ituri in the northeastern corner of the country, where nearly a million people have been displaced by armed conflicts over mineral resources. Ramping up contact tracing is a priority, Kayikwamba Wagner said.
In the provincial capital of Bunia, AP reporters saw empty emergency treatment centers, and doctors in the nearby town of Bambu using expired medical masks while tending to suspected Ebola patients.
The provincial government said Friday it was temporarily banning wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people. It said funerals must be conducted in strict compliance with health protocols. The authorities also required journalists to obtain a permit to report on the outbreak, impeding their work.
The illness also has been reported in two Congolese provinces to the south of Ituri — North Kivu and South Kivu, where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group controls many key cities, including Goma and Bukavu, where the rebels reported two cases.
The group said Friday it was creating a crisis team to fight the outbreak.
Kayikwamba Wagner said having the illness in rebel-held areas was alarming because “M23 is, despite whatever ambitions they may have, thoroughly ill equipped" to fight the disease.
She said the Congo government and rebels were not communicating on the outbreak.
The efforts of health officials and aid groups have met with pushback from communities due to misinformation or situations where medical policy has clashed with local customs such as burial rites.
On Thursday, an Ebola treatment center in Rwampara was set on fire by youths who were angered when they were blocked from retrieving the body of a friend who apparently had died of Ebola, according to witnesses and police.
The dangerous work of burying suspected victims is being managed wherever possible by authorities, because the bodies can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when they are prepared for burial or when people gather for funerals.
Julienne Lusenge, president of Women’s Solidarity for Inclusive Peace and Development, a local aid group, said the population’s anger is mostly due to misinformation. “We have lived through years and years of conflict and hardship so rumors spread easily,” she said.
She said some churches have told their congregations the outbreak is fake and that divine protection makes medical care unnecessary.
In the Ituri province mining town of Mongbwalu where the outbreak is believed to have originated, Lokana Moro Faustin lost his 16-year-old daughter to the disease and bemoaned the fact that he was not able to give her a proper goodbye because of Ebola restrictions.
“At first, we thought it was malaria. But then came vomiting, a high fever, nosebleeds, and bloody diarrhea,” he said, grief-stricken.
The teenager died on May 15 and her body was taken from the hospital by specialized teams and taken directly to the cemetery for a secure burial. Faustin was not able to say goodbye because he was in self-isolation, and it pained him to have his daughter buried by people who were not family.
The United Nations said Friday it released $60 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund to accelerate the response in Congo and in the region.
The U.S. has pledged $23 million in funding to bolster the response in Congo and Uganda, and said it would also fund the establishment of up to 50 Ebola treatment clinics in the affected regions.
Lusenge said her group’s small hospital near in Bunia lacks basic protective equipment, exposing nurses and doctors to possible infection, she said. “We only have hand sanitizer and a few masks for the nurses, but we need much more than that," Lusenge said.
Both the WHO and Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe the outbreak is larger than the cases reported so far.
The region’s already-weak health infrastructure and surveillance capacity has been further weakened by international aid cuts, experts say. The International Rescue Committee said it had to stop its surveillance activities in three out of five areas in Ituri over the last year because of funding cuts.
Armed conflict in the region further complicates efforts to handle the crisis. To get from Bunia to Mongbwalu, aid groups have to brace for potential attacks from armed groups.
“The outbreak can still be contained but the window for action is narrow,” Gabriela Arenas from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said Friday.
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Pronczuk reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Constant Same Bagalwa in Bunia, Congo; Jean Yves Kamale in Kinshasa, Congo; Mark Banchereau and Wilson McMakin in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.
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Charred hospital beds stand in smoldering Ebola treatment center in Rwampara, Congo, Thursday, May 21, 2026, after it was set fire by people angry at being stopped from retrieving a body, according to a witness and police. (AP Photo/Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
Flames and smoke rise from an Ebola treatment center in Rwampara, Congo, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
Medical staff carry an Ebola patient to a treatment center in Rwampara, Congo, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)
A person is wearing a protective face mask in front of the WHO logo, during the media regarding the epidemic of Ebola disease, during a press conference at the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, May 22, 2026. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)
